Nokia’s Here Auto Tries to Innovate

The latest version of Here Auto, launched at the Paris Auto Show, has very few rough edges. It’s designed to think ahead of you, learn your habits, work with other devices and present information and options in the least distracting way possible. That’s Nokia’s goal, anyway – to see if it succeeded, I took a tour around Paris in the company’s Range Rover demonstrator.

Self aware in car mapping. Sounds interesting but a demonstrator doesn’t mean care companies are going to jump on board. My 2014 Toyota 4Running has a completely out of date navigation system that I’m stuck with. Toyota seems to have signed deals with Yelp, Bing and Facebook to get POIs which I can’t decide is better or worse than just having a whole Nokia system. Apple and Google are getting car integration but they don’t seem to be doing any better than Nokia.

I suspect most of us will continue to use Google or Apple Maps in the car on our smartphone or tablets for naviagation. At least Siri talks through my bluetooth…